NPD does not mean Narcissistic Personality Disorder
February 19, 2010
As a follow-up to the previous entry on New Product Development (NPD), this entry is about creating a process to "tame the chaos." One point of clarification: the term Product here refers either to a product, a service or a solution. These terms are... Read more...
The Reality and the Fantasy
February 4, 2010
I've been working on several problems related to New Product Development (NPD) lately. in short, there are two big problems: 1. The External Market Problem 2. The Internal Company Problem These are both significant problems. The market is a harsh... Read more...
Users or Abusers?
January 20, 2010
I just finished reading a paper that distinguishes Customers from Users. The distinction is central to the articles key points, which are mostly about the Reality of Freemium in SaaS. I am always a bit leery of anyone who claims to have access... Read more...
The Ways Things Connect
January 7, 2010
Funny how trends seem to be converging. Or maybe I'm just in a state of mind where I see the similarities between things, seeing the ways things connect rather than how things tend not to connect at all. I was reading more on one of my favorite topics,... Read more...
Lean Scrum?
December 30, 2009
I've been doing some parallel reading: "Lean Manufacturing" and "Scrum." On first glance, that may seem like an odd combo, that there might not be much in common between these two disciplines. Lean Manufacturing is largely about how to create flexible,... Read more...
Throwing Darts
December 18, 2009
I’ve been thinking about requirements. Where do they fit? Are they the threads that hold the thing together? It could be that they do just that. Generally speaking, there are three types of requirements: 1. business requirements, 2. functional... Read more...
Portfolio Matrix
December 1, 2009
Humans seem to prefer pictures. While we also like complex data systems, we like to visualize complex data to make it less complex. We also like a good story. Do we want to look at a massive spread sheet full of numbers from top to bottom? Or do we... Read more...
PPM Quadrants
November 16, 2009
I’ve discussed this before but never put out a diagram that shows the four quadrants that define the migration from Project Management to Project Portfolio Management. Here’s the diagram: Read More →
Where Great Ideas Come From…
November 9, 2009
The notion of “a great idea” can mean different things to different people. A “great idea” might mean that we figured out a new technique to do a lot less work in order to get the same things done. Or, a “great idea”... Read more...
Portfolio Mixer
November 4, 2009
A truism: we want to get the most out of our project investments. Ok. So what? We have a limited resource pool so we can't do everything. Even if we could do everything, we probably don't want to try to do it all anyway. Having to make choices forces... Read more...